The invention relates to a method of transmitting or recording a television signal by way of a transmission or recording channel, the television signal comprising a video signal, said method comprising creating a television signal to be supplied to the channel in accordance with a plurality of possible operations on the video signal providing mutually different distributions of spatial and/or temporal resolution, and a selection of one operation on the video signal from the plurality of possible operations on the video signal.
The invention also relates to a recording medium on which a television signal has been recorded, said television signal including a video signal having been processed by the recording method.
The invention also relates to apparatus for processing the video signal of a television signal prior to its application to a transmission or recording channel, said apparatus comprising video signal input means, a plurality of video signal processing paths providing mutually different distributions of spatial and/or temporal resolution, and a decision circuit having an output coupled to a control signal input of the transmitting section.
The invention further relates to apparatus for receiving a television signal including a video signal and being conveyed over a transmission or recording channel, said apparatus comprising means for processing a video signal in accordance with a plurality of possible operations on said received video signal providing mutually different distributions of spatial and/or temporal resolution, each operation corresponding to a respective one of different sampling patterns in accordance with which the received video signal could have been sampled before said conveyance.
The invention also relates to means for processing a video signal for use with the receiving apparatus.
Such a video signal processing apparatus and such a receiving apparatus are known from the article "Analyse de structures de sous-echantillonnage spatio-temporel d'un signal TVHD en vue de sa transmission dans un canal MAC", presented on the TVHD'87, Ottawa (CA), 4-8 Oct. 1987, vol. 1, p. 6.2.2.-6.2.28, in which three video signal processing paths and three possible operations on said received video signal are shown.